Press Clare, Gillmeister Helge, Heyes Cecilia
Department of Psychology, University College London, 26 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AP, UK.
Proc Biol Sci. 2007 Oct 22;274(1625):2509-14. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2007.0774.
Recent research in cognitive neuroscience has found that observation of human actions activates the 'mirror system' and provokes automatic imitation to a greater extent than observation of non-biological movements. The present study investigated whether this human bias depends primarily on phylogenetic or ontogenetic factors by examining the effects of sensorimotor experience on automatic imitation of non-biological robotic, stimuli. Automatic imitation of human and robotic action stimuli was assessed before and after training. During these test sessions, participants were required to execute a pre-specified response (e.g. to open their hand) while observing a human or robotic hand making a compatible (opening) or incompatible (closing) movement. During training, participants executed opening and closing hand actions while observing compatible (group CT) or incompatible movements (group IT) of a robotic hand. Compatible, but not incompatible, training increased automatic imitation of robotic stimuli (speed of responding on compatible trials, compared with incompatible trials) and abolished the human bias observed at pre-test. These findings suggest that the development of the mirror system depends on sensorimotor experience, and that, in our species, it is biased in favour of human action stimuli because these are more abundant than non-biological action stimuli in typical developmental environments.
认知神经科学领域的最新研究发现，观察人类动作会激活“镜像系统”，并且相较于观察非生物运动，会在更大程度上引发自动模仿。本研究通过考察感觉运动经验对非生物机器人刺激自动模仿的影响，探究了这种对人类动作的偏好主要是取决于种系发生因素还是个体发生因素。在训练前后对人类动作和机器人动作刺激的自动模仿进行了评估。在这些测试环节中，参与者在观察一只人类的手或机器人的手做出匹配（张开）或不匹配（闭合）动作时，被要求执行一个预先指定的反应（如张开手）。在训练过程中，参与者在观察机器人手的匹配动作（CT组）或不匹配动作（IT组）时执行张开和闭合手的动作。匹配训练而非不匹配训练增强了对机器人刺激的自动模仿（与不匹配试验相比，匹配试验中的反应速度），并消除了测试前观察到的对人类动作的偏好。这些发现表明，镜像系统的发展取决于感觉运动经验，而且在我们人类中，它偏向于人类动作刺激，因为在典型的发育环境中，这些刺激比非生物动作刺激更为丰富。
